Wabash Alumnus Scott Seay to Give Talk on Monday

Wabash College’s religion department invites you to a talk by Scott Seay at 7 p.m., Monday, November 6, in room 216 in Center Hall. Seay is the Professor of American Religious History at Christian Theological Seminary of Indianapolis. Seay will talk on Puritan Execution Sermons, a topic on which he has written extensively.

Seay is a 1991 graduate of Wabash College and earned an M.Div. from Christian Theological Seminary in 1996. He returned to his alma mater in 2005 from the Department of Religion at Ashland University in Northeast Ohio, where he also served as interim senior minister at First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Ashland.

In addition, Seay holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago Divinity School, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in church history from Vanderbilt University. His dissertation traced developments in the theology of crime and punishment in colonial and early national New England by examining "execution sermons," discourses delivered in connection with public hangings.

Seay’s teaching and research interests include all dimensions of American religious history and modern European church history. He is particularly interested in the relationship between Christian faith and social problems in historical perspective, and the historical relationship between religion and politics. As an ordained Disciples minister and historian, he has interests in the history of all three communions that trace their heritage to the Stone-Campbell Movement.

Seay has published two articles, over 40 entries in various reference works on American religion, and a number of critical book reviews. He currently has two books under contract: the first is an edited volume of election sermons preached by a group of theologians known as the New Divinity Men in early national New England (with Edwin Mellen Press); the second is a revision of his dissertation (with Northern Illinois University Press). Both books will be published in 2007.

Most recently, the editors of The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (Eerdman’s, 2004) have asked Seay to join them as the managing editor of another innovative project to be published in 2012: a global and inclusive narrative history of the Stone-Campbell Movement. With over a dozen professional historians making contributions, this new history will tell the story of all three streams of the Movement in such a way that our shared past, our common interests, and our pursuit of Christian unity are the main themes. Moreover, it will be a global story, one that recognizes both the origins of the Movement in the United States and celebrates its growth throughout the world. The project is being underwritten by the Disciples of Christ Historical Society.